Spending in Wisconsin Senate race sets record

Johnson, Feingold spend $27 million

The Senate race between Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson obliterated all spending records for federal campaigns in Wisconsin, with the two combining to spend roughly $27 million in 2010, according to new campaign filings.

Of that total, the Republican Johnson spent about $14 million after getting into the race in May.

Feingold, the Democratic incumbent, spent just under $13 million over the course of the entire election year.

No previous race for U.S. Senate or U.S. House in Wisconsin has remotely approached those spending levels.

In 2004, Feingold and his GOP opponent Tim Michels combined to spend just under $15 million over a two-year period.

In 1988, Herb Kohl and Susan Engeleiter combined to spend a little over $10 million over a two-year period.

Those were the costliest Senate races in the state before this one.

Johnson put about $8.7 million of his own money into the campaign, his post-election finance report shows. He also raised a little more than $6 million from contributors.

The $27 million figure only counts money spent in the election year itself. If you include the campaign spending reported by Feingold during the previous five years of the official election cycle (2005-2009), then Feingold's spending total climbs to $19.4 million (about $5 million more than what Johnson spent) and the two candidates' combined spending exceeds $33 million.

If you consider only the time frame when Johnson was an active candidate - from late spring of 2010 through the November election - the GOP challenger had a very modest spending advantage.

That advantage grows somewhat larger if you factor in the outside money spent by independent groups, which totaled about $3 million, according to the Sunlight Foundation, almost all of it spent on the GOP side.

It was still unclear Friday where the Wisconsin race ranked in cost among all Senate races in 2010, since post-election reports were still coming in. It will not be the most expensive. The two California candidates, Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina, had spent more than $40 million as of mid-October, as had the two Nevada candidates, Harry Reid and Sharron Angle.

What do the numbers suggest about the role of money in the Wisconsin Senate race?

It's pretty hard to make the case that Feingold lost for lack of money. He raised and spent far more than he ever had before and far more than any previous Senate candidate in Wisconsin. His fund raising for the six-year election cycle topped $20 million (about $19 million from individual donors).

It's also hard to make the case that Feingold lost because of outside money. Yes, conservative groups such as the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce came in and spent significantly to help Johnson and to defeat Feingold. Yes, the outside money in this race was spent overwhelmingly on the Republican side.

But the outside spending was dwarfed by what the two candidates themselves spent in this race. Independent groups played a far larger role in other Senate races. They spent 10 times as much in Colorado as in Wisconsin. In fact, there were nine U.S. Senate races where outside spending topped $10 million, far more than what was spent on the Feingold-Johnson race.

All that said, it would be absurd to say that money wasn't a big part of what happened, simply because Johnson's ability to self-fund was critical to his candidacy. He was a complete unknown six months before the election. Then he hit the airwaves, outspending Feingold significantly in some early stretches of the race. In a compressed campaign, his personal money gave Johnson the wherewithal to make himself known, defend himself from attacks, inoculate himself against any bad press and make his case against Feingold, which he clearly did with some effectiveness. By making his candidacy plausible, his personal funding also undoubtedly helped him raise money from others.

In short, much like Senate Democrat Herb Kohl's first election in 1988, Johnson's self-funding didn't guarantee him victory (lots of big self-funders lost in 2010), but it was vital to his victory.

About Craig Gilbert

Craig Gilbert is the Journal Sentinel's Washington Bureau Chief and writes the Wisconsin Voter blog about politics and elections.